Accessing historical content items of a content management system through placeholders

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10956387-B2
Application number	US-201615395238-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 30, 2016
Priority date	Dec 30, 2016
Publication date	Mar 23, 2021
Grant date	Mar 23, 2021

Abstract

The present technology provides an interface and system for generating a previous version of a directory structure that can be useful in the restoration of a directory or file. The system, methods and non-transitory computer-readable storage media include receiving a request for a previous version of a directory structure at an indicated date, querying a content management system for placeholder content items associated with the previous version of the directory structure at the indicated date, receiving the placeholder content items, and generating a read-only copy of at least a portion of the previous version of the directory structure at the indicated date based on the placeholder content items, wherein the read-only copy of the directory structure is separate from the directory structure at a current date.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A computer-implemented method for visually presenting a previous version of a directory structure at a client device, the method comprising:
receiving a request to visually present a previous version of a directory structure at a GUI of the client device, wherein the previous version of the directory structure is associated with a previous date;
querying a content management system for content items contained in the previous version of the directory structure at the previous date;
receiving, from the content management system, one or more indications of content items contained in the previous version of the directory structure at the previous date;
presenting, at the GUI of the client device, a visual representational rendering of at least a portion of the previous version of the directory structure based on the one or more indications of the content items, wherein the visual representational rendering of at least the portion of the previous version of the directory structure includes placeholders representing the content items contained in the previous version of the directory structure at the previous date, and wherein the visual representational rendering of at least the portion of the previous version of the directory structure is separate from a current version of the directory structure associated with a current date;
receiving, at the client device, a further request to access a content item selected by a user and having a corresponding placeholder in the visual representational rendering of at least the portion of the previous version of the directory structure;
querying the content management system for the content item using the corresponding placeholder associated with the content item;
receiving, from the content management system, the content item;
updating the visual representational rendering of at least the portion of the previous version of the directory structure to replace the corresponding placeholder with the content item, wherein the updated visual representational rendering visually differentiates the content item from remaining placeholders based on one or more visual attributes, the one or more visual attributes indicating that the content item is a downloaded content item and the remaining placeholders are representations of corresponding content items; and
moving, based on a user input, the content item from the previous version of the directory structure to the current version of the directory structure.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the further request to access the content item comprises navigating to the corresponding placeholder in the visual representational rendering of at least the portion of the previous version of the directory structure.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the further request to access the content item comprises navigating to a parent content item in the visual representational rendering of at least the portion of the previous version of the directory structure.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising copying the content item from the visual representational rendering of at least the portion of the previous version of the directory structure to another directory structure.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving, at the client device, an additional request to access an additional content item stored inside a parent content item contained in the visual representational rendering of the previous version of the directory structure, wherein the visual representational rendering of at least the portion of the previous version of the directory structure does not include a respective placeholder associated with the additional content item;
querying the content management system for the respective placeholder associated with the additional content item;
receiving, from the content management system, the respective placeholder; and
generating, at the client device, a visual representational rendering of a previous version of a sub-directory structure associated with the parent content item, the sub-directory structure including the respective placeholder associated with the additional content item, wherein the previous version of the sub-directory structure is associated with the previous date.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the placeholders comprise metadata for locating the content items in storage at the content management system, the method further comprising overwriting a current version of the content item in the current version of the directory structure with the content item from the previous version of the directory structure.

7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving an input to navigate from a first location within the visual representational rendering of at least the portion of the previous version of the directory structure to a second location within the visual representational rendering of at least the portion of the previous version of the directory structure, wherein the second location corresponds to a parent node in the previous version of the directory structure;
receiving an indication of an additional content item contained within the parent node in the previous version of the directory structure; and
populating the visual representational rendering with at least one of the additional content item contained within the parent node or an additional placeholder representing the additional content item.

8. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions which, when executed by at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to:
receive a request for a previous version of a directory structure at a GUI of a device, wherein the previous version of the directory structure is associated with a previous date;
query a content management system for content items contained in the previous version of the directory structure at the previous date;
receive, from the content management system, one or more indications of content items contained in the previous version of the directory structure at the previous date;
generate, at the GUI of the device, a visual representational rendering of at least a portion of the previous version of the directory structure based on the one or more indications of the content items, wherein the visual representational rendering of at least the portion of the previous version of the directory structure includes placeholders representing the content items contained in the previous version of the directory structure at the previous date, and wherein the visual representational rendering of at least the portion of the previous version of the directory structure is separate from a current version of the directory structure associated with a current date;
receive a further request to access a content item selected by a user and having a corresponding placeholder in the visual representational rendering of at least the portion of the previous version of the directory structure;
query the content management system for the content item using the corresponding placeholder associated with the content item;
receive, from the content management system, the content item; and
update the visual representational rendering of at least the portion of the previous version of the directory structure to replace the corresponding placeholder with the content item, wherein the updated visual representational rendering visually differentiates the content item from remaining placeholders based on one or more visual attributes, the one or more visual attributes indicating that the content item is a downloaded content item and the remaining placeholders are representations of corresponding content items; and
move, based on a user input, the content item from the previous version of the director

Assignees

• Dropbox Inc

Inventors

• Cong Shi
• Xu Tony

Classifications

• G06F16/94 Primary

  Hypermedia (Hyperlinking G06F40/134) · CPC title

• G06F16/219 Primary

  Managing data history or versioning (querying versioned data G06F16/2474; querying temporal data G06F16/2477) · CPC title

• G06F16/22

  Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures · CPC title

• G06F16/2474

  Sequence data queries, e.g. querying versioned data · CPC title